2014 Andy Culpepper CD/CD

This 2014 Andy Culpepper is a flamenco guitar with a cedar top, Spanish cedar back and sides and mechanical pegs, handmade in Ithaca, New York, with a Hauser-style rosette.

Cedar on Cedar: A Lightweight Flamenco

After several years of selling his guitars, we've really come to admire Andy for his building skill, sound quality and innovation – and this guitar shows precisely why. This is a lightweight flamenco made with a cedar top and Spanish cedar back and sides (the same wood traditionally used for the neck and some internal bracing of the guitar). The two woods look great together, sort of an amber "blanca" like an old cedar-top Gerundino. The Hauser-style rosette is in the same color palette, along with the Honduran rosewood fingerboard and bridge and the African rosewood bindings and headstock. All woods traditionally used in building, but reimagined to beautiful effect.

Sound and Playability

The sound is surprising too. Plenty of volume and responsiveness with great tonal complexity and color make this guitar very flamenco, yet a great complement to a more traditional blanca – a halfway stop on the way to a negra. Andy's an accomplished flamenco player himself, and that shows in the easy playability and setup of this instrument. The mechanical tuning pegs add a traditional look but tune like a machine, while keeping the headstock light and string changes fast. A winning instrument, with all the right spirit and performance of a great flamenco.

Condition

It has been played a lot – always a good sign – but respectfully, showing modest wear.

Andy Culpepper: A Player Turned Guitar Maker

Andy Culpepper grew up in a musical family and started to play classical guitar as a teenager, later moving into flamenco – he even studied flamenco in Spain and has since done a good amount of performing: solo, accompanying and for dance. As with many luthiers, Andy's first guitar was an instrument to play on himself, but after showing it around he began getting orders, and so eventually he decided to become a full-time luthier. His guitars are truly a "player's" instrument, very easy to play and responsive to both the left and right hands.

Training with Richard Cogger in Ithaca, New York

Andy's formal studies were done with Richard Cogger, a classical and flamenco guitar maker in Ithaca, New York. Andy shared workspace with him for a couple of years before establishing his own shop in Ithaca, where he continues to work today. He builds both classical and flamenco guitars, and GSI is the only dealer in the USA that carries his instruments. Read our interview with Andy.

Torres and the "Open Bar" Bracing System

Andy believes that the best guitars are still modeled on the designs and ideas of Antonio de Torres (1817–1892), and he admires Torres for his constant experimenting with different ideas. The "open bar" system of top bracing, where the outer fan struts pass through openings in the harmonic bars, is a key design element in Andy's classical guitars. It creates an extremely responsive, clear, even and beautiful tone that can envelop the listener in a kind of "surround sound" – quite an experience to hear, and perfect for any concert hall.

Built by Hand and Voiced "in the White"

Andy prefers to work in a traditional manner – very few power tools, and as much by hand as possible, to achieve the maximum amount of control over the quality of his work. His guitars are assembled by first joining the neck to the top to precisely establish the center line of the guitar. This assembly is placed face down on a solera, or workboard, the sides are slotted into the heel block and glued to the top with individual glue blocks called tentalones, and finally the back is fitted and the box is closed. The bridge is glued on before finishing, because Andy likes to play all of his guitars "in the white" and refine the voice by sanding the top if necessary. The entire guitar is then French polished with shellac, applied completely by hand with the traditional muñeca, or cloth pad.